Take-Two: Lessons have been learned from GTA4 DLC

Everything needs to have a download component says Feder.

Take-Two chairman Straus Zelnick has said that the publisher is "grateful" it tried its hand at downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV.

"I think the lesson learned from our point of view is that we are grateful that we took it [GTA4 DLC] on," said Zelnick during the publisher's Q3 earnings call. "We were passionate about trying it, it’s a good piece of business for us. It was very highly rated and we now have actually another retail opportunity here.

He continued: "… probably the biggest lesson learned is that it is possible to come out with something very high quality that’s a subset of the original title [and a line extension] and I think the second lesson learned is that one of the biggest shifts in the interactive entertainment business is that now like basically every other entertainment business, there are multiple windows available for an individual product and that will probably change everyone’s view of product creation, line extension and line expansion."

Take-Two CEO Ben Feder also added his thoughts: "I think one of the lessons that not just in this download but some other download experiences, it’s clear that retail is the channel for the foreseeable future.

"Nonetheless, there is a download component to a lot of our games and there will continue to be a download component. The games live online and they live at retail, they live at both and whether that is download first, retail second/retail first, download second or some combination of the two, that’s an area that we are going to experiment with because we are innovating in that area and it’s likely to change from title to title, but everything is going to have a download component, needs to have a download component to it and this is kind of one of the key lessons and we’ll see how - see how GTA in the retail SKU performs."

Feder concluded: "And so the downloads help to seed that market and we think will be critically important."